Around four years after Calpian invested $29 million in MoneyOnMobile, it is going all in: Calpian has sold off its credit card processing business. Now with only an India payments business to focus on, Calpian is changing its name to Money On Mobile, Inc. The timeline is interesting: Calpian was launched in 2011 to buy credit card processing assets, invested in MoneyOnMobile in 2012, and by 2016, the credit card business has been sold off, and it's all MoneyOnMobile. Claiming to have served 173 million Indian mobile phone users till date, Calpian says that MoneyOnMobile "has grown to be India's largest mobile money system". This, it says, is what led to its board to sell their US operations in the payment processing business on November 30, 2015. "Calpian, Inc. is now a pure play company with only one focus: the growth of MoneyOnMobile", it's Chairman and CEO Harold Montgomery said on its earnings conference call, following the announcement of its FY16 results. MoneyOnMobile's primary business is money transfer within India, but like other offline digital wallet players, including Oxigen, the money is also used for purchasing tickets and paying bills: Consumers deposit cash with one of its agents at a retail location, and it gets deposited into a wallet. Then an agent can use that money to pay bills or transfer the money to a designated user elsewhere, using only the mobile phone and SMS text messages. MediaNama readers should note that it's unlikely that Calpian served that many "users",…
